Dog yard renovations 2020 edition

Before we get too far into the yard renovations, we should acknowledge that today is Mother’s Day and wish Halo a happy day! Halo was the absolute BEST mommy dog. She gave birth naturally to 3 1-week-old-sized puppies. Seriously, Cheeky was the smallest and she was over a pound! Halo kept their environment and those puppies spotless. She would leave them every now and then to sleep with Jenny in the guest bed, but the smallest whimper and she was back in that box. She got little rest. She nursed them until her hair fell out. And she loved every minute of raising those babies. She remains uber tolerant of Cheeky. She’s just the best.

Ok, dog yard!! We have made significant changes over the years:
First, we turned the mud pit into a pea gravel yard and put in planters to hold some shade plants.
Then, we built a new fence to prevent fence fighting with the neighbor dog.
Finally, we added a memorial to Indy.

The latest iteration is surviving three girl dogs peeing on the grass, killing the grass, then having that turn into a bare muddy area that coincides with the squirrel hunting track.

Jenny’s cousin moved to Denver last year and she is a landscape artist. She found these super cool slate tiles to create a squirrel chasing path and had a plan to plant some shade loving grass seed. So for four hours we worked on prepping the yard for seed and digging down and placing the new pavers. We also removed a huge piece of edging. While it was the kind that had a curved edge to prevent cutting dog feet and had mostly been buried in the last 15 years since Marc did the initial landscaping, it felt good to get it out of there. After all, our main goal is to have a completely dog safe yard.

The path looks SO good! Hopefully, we will start to see some grass germination in a couple weeks and then we will be adding some planters, shrubs, ground cover, and mulch! And in other news, Marc repainted the chair on our front porch now that we repainted our house last year. Future puppies will take their go home picture on a red chair!